I thought we could finally move at a calmer pace after the last two weeks of turbulence following the major Gmail change, but alas Google has decreed “not yet, no, not yet”.

Just want the fix? Scroll down to the section on switching to the Beta channel.

The task bar is greyed out

You’ll have spotted that ActiveInbox’s task bar is now greyed out while viewing an email.

If I may take a moment, it’s oddly a good thing that it’s greyed out.

If you read the earlier blog post, you’ll know that two weeks Gmail changed something that prevented ActiveInbox from getting accurate email IDs. One of the side effects of that was that notes could not be saved, but gave the appearance of being saved because the task bar looked normal.

So one of the improvements we rolled out was to make it unambiguous: if ActiveInbox isn’t 100% certain it had the correct ID for your email, it now disables that bar to prevent unexpected behaviour.

Which is one silver lining on an otherwise very dark cloud of not finding the ID again…

What caused it?

It’s kind of an “aftershock” of the issue from two weeks ago. As a reminder, that was due to ActiveInbox being unable to get the email’s ID after a Gmail change… well, they’ve changed again with a slight twist, bringing the issue back.

The great news is, all the work of the last two weeks meant it was very easy to handle: I got it fixed within an hour of the first support email coming in.

The frustrating news is, we still have to wait for Google to roll it out to you. 7.10.24 is currently on its way through their publication process.

How can I get the fixed version?

The amazing news is they’ve fast-tracked the Beta channel, so you can actually get 7.10.24 right this second by switching to it.

But don’t worry if that’s too much hassle, we can also give you a temporary workaround to keep you going until the regular version updates.

Option 1: Switch to the Beta to get 7.10.24 now

All you have to do is temporarily uninstall the regular version and reinstall the Beta version:

  • Open your Extensions list in Chrome (follow the menu, or paste chrome://extensions into your address bar)
  • Remove ActiveInbox
  • Go to our Beta channel and click Add to Chrome
  • Refresh Gmail

Note: You’ll need to switch back to the official channel in a few days! You can do this by reversing the process: in your Extensions list, uninstall ActiveInbox Beta and reinstall it from the regular channel.

Option 2: use the workarounds of Gmail labels until Thursday

I’m reasonably confident that Google will deploy 7.10.24 to everyone within the next 24 hours – so by early Thursday.

While that’s happening, parts of ActiveInbox will still work:

  • You can view your task lists and click into emails from there
  • The hover menu still works in the email lists (e.g. your inbox, search results, the task lists), to add due dates, projects, etc.

To add a due date or project in an email view there is a helpful workaround: you can add them by adding Gmail labels.

E.g. to add a due date for today, you can add the label ZD/20251126 for the 26th November 2025 (that’s because date labels work in the format ZD/yyyymmdd). Or to add an email to the Acme project, add the label P/Acme (all projects are a label that is prefixed with P/).

The only thing you cannot do with this workaround is to add sub tasks / notes to an email.

One more reminder! You can always talk to us

I’m just going to put our support email here: support@activeinboxhq.com

If you write in, you’ll be reaching either Lisa (who has worked with us for 14 years) or me (Andy). We’re here when things go wrong, are delighted by feature requests or problems to solve, and even just have a chat (Lisa has knowledge – or failing that, at least strong opinions! – on a genuinely astonishing range of topics).

  

This was written by Andy Mitchell